


if our substance be indeed divine

by reclamation



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-02 20:16:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21167252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reclamation/pseuds/reclamation
Summary: Falling from Heaven is a one-way trip. Usually.Or: The one in which Crowley accidentally reforms the heavenly judicial system.





	if our substance be indeed divine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tvglow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tvglow/gifts).

> Title taken from John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Specifically, it’s from this section:
> 
> _What fear we then? what doubt we to incense_   
_His utmost ire? which to the highth enrag’d,_   
_Will either quite consume us, and reduce_   
_To nothing this essential, happier farr_   
_Then miserable to have eternal being:_   
_Or if our substance be indeed Divine,_   
_And cannot cease to be, we are at worst_   
_On this side nothing; and by proof we feel_   
_Our power sufficient to disturb his Heav’n,_   
_And with perpetual inrodes to Allarme,_   
_Though inaccessible, his fatal Throne:_   
_Which if not Victory is yet Revenge._

Falling from Heaven is a one-way trip. Usually. This is perhaps why only two angels have _ elected _ to fall—allegedly of their own free will—in the history of angelic kind. The first is quite infamously Lucifer. Although some may argue that he did not intend to fall, one does not begin a war against God herself without the intent to secede in some manner. The second instance is that of a far less well-known angel: Aziraphale. 

Of course, there is also the even stranger case of Crowley, but that's a story for later.

After _ Aziraphale v. The Principalities of Heaven (2019)_, in which Aziraphale survived execution by hellfire and brought the entire justice system of Heaven under question, he quietly retired to the home of Anthony J. Crowley in London. At this time, Aziraphale remained an angel only by technicality and oversight. Upon failing to cease existing, no one thought to tell him that his service as an angel of Heaven was no longer needed and Crowley, who was posing as Aziraphale unbeknownst to the archangels at the time, didn't bother to ask.

In fact, the thought did not occur to either Aziraphale or Crowley until almost exactly three months later.

On this particular day, an ordinary postman brings the post, as they do. Or would, if Crowley ever received correspondence via such a mundane source. Today, though, there is an official-looking letter addressed to Mr. A. Z. Fell. The return address reads, simply, "Heaven." The envelope is a pristine white, marred only by red-stamped blocky text that declares "URGENT! TIME SENSITIVE!" 

"That can't mean anything good," Crowley mutters, and briefly considers the repercussions of losing the letter in the nearest convenient fire.

Aziraphale chooses this moment to enter the room. Crowley looks up in time to see his usual smile fall to a concerned frown, his eyes on the letter. He asks, "What is that, my dear?"

Crowley answers, shrugging, "They don't know when to quit, your lot."

"I rather thought they'd let us," Aziraphale pauses, clearly searching for words, "just_ be,_ I suppose. Stupid of me, I know." He wrings his hands a bit, and Crowley curses himself for missing the chance to burn the damn thing.

"My opinion? Throw it in the bin. They've nothing to say you need listen to anymore."

"It might be important," Aziraphale says. "What does it say?"

Crowley huffs. He offers the offending letter towards Aziraphale. "Only one way to find out."

Aziraphale does not take the envelope. Instead, he widens his eyes a bit, pouts his lower lip out slightly, and waits. It's the same look that popularized Hamlet. Crowley rolls his eyes, a gesture lost behind his glasses, but his hands are already tearing the letter open. 

"Well?" Aziraphale asks before Crowley even has the paper unfolded.

"He who's too squeamish to read his own mail doesn't get to be impatient." Crowley scans the document, which is mercifully shorter than one expects of the windbags who run Heaven. He reads aloud, "Kindly report to Gabriel regarding your ongoing status as a representative of the Host. Your response is required to be hand-delivered. You are expected by—" Crowley hums, working out the date, "—yesterday, I think. Post these days, can't be trusted."

Aziraphale loses all color in his face. He says, "I'll be fashionably late then." 

Crowley finds that he does not like the nerves he hears in Aziraphale's voice and likes the idea of Aziraphale going back to Heaven even less. 

"You cannot be serious. You aren't going."

"I can't _ not _ go, Crowley."

"But you can actually?" He gives Aziraphale a look. "You can do exactly that. Quite easily, in fact. Deadline's passed anyway. And if you showed up there, chances are they'd want a second crack at hellfiring you into oblivion. Bad idea."

Aziraphale's frown deepens. "If they wanted that, I imagine they'd try another kidnapping rather than issue an official invitation."

"You don't know that. Perhaps they want to poke and prod at you to find out why you're suddenly hellfire-resistant."

"I can't ignore them forever."

"If you insist on going, I'll come with. Keep you out of trouble."

"Crowley," Aziraphale says, pained. "You can't."

There are days when Crowley almost feels as if he can understand exactly what's going through Aziraphale's mind. His eyes are so expressive. This is not one of those times. Everything about Aziraphale is screaming anxiety and yet he's speaking utter nonsense. It's on the edge of Crowley's tongue to point out that Aziraphale hasn't come very far at all if he runs off at Heaven's first half-hearted beckoning. However, whether he understands it or not, Crowley does recognize that infuriating stubbornness in the set of Aziraphale's shoulders. Once decided upon what he thinks is right, Aziraphale sees it through. Crowley would say 'for better or worse,' but _ that _ at least seems clear.

"Do what you want then. I'll be waiting with an 'I told you so', assuming you come back as more than a mound of ash" he says, sullen.

Incongruously, it's Aziraphale who offers comfort. Aziraphale lays his hand on Crowley's shoulder, squeezing twice gently. It's impossible not to focus on that point of contact, which means nothing like what Crowley _ wants _ it to mean. Aziraphale, who touches him these days, if not often, with newfound ease of companionability. 

"I'll be back before you know it," Arizaphale says, regaining some confidence. "I promise."

Crowley wishes he could do anything at all to shield this ridiculous creature from whatever those fussy hypocrites want. As wishes have no place in reality, he leans into the touch instead, if only slightly, and tries not to feel miserably useless.

"If you say so, angel."

  
  


Waiting is a form of torture. Crowley's been to Hell often enough, he should know. That morning, he had followed Aziraphale back to his bookshop. He watched as Aziraphale set up candles and other odds and ends. Any and all reminders that this was a terrible idea were blithely ignored. Then Aziraphale had popped off with no more a farewell than a 'Put out the candles after I go? Back in a jiffy.'

So he blew out the candles and settled in for a wait.

As ambiguous a measurement as it is, Crowley is fairly certain a jiffy has come and gone. He's already fidgeted his way through two slow hours. After the first hour, he had considered quite literally crawling up the walls, if only he weren't waiting in Aziraphale's bookshop, which has no space on the walls for anything other than books and yet more books. But he needs something to occupy himself, so the thought pops into his head obtrusively and repetitively. Often the thought is followed by: It would serve Aziraphale right for worrying him so to find a few books toppled to the floor. 

Crowley contents himself instead with trying his best to pace a hole through the floor. At one point, he futilely picks up a newspaper. He only manages through a few inane headlines—politicians doing their typical thing, sports, more sports, some big corporation embroiled in a legal scandal—before giving up. His imagination offers up a nightmare headline: _ Local bookshop owner disappears._

He can't concentrate. He goes back to the pacing.

If any of those stuffy angels harm Aziraphale, he thinks, he will destroy them utterly. Palms full of hellfire and revenge. No survivors. He does not think of what could possibly come after, a world without Aziraphale puttering around London, smiling without reserve as he samples a particularly fine meal or finds a particularly interesting passage in any of his books.

Finally, Aziraphale returns exactly six hours and forty-two minutes after he left. 

From outside the shop, half of a distracted exchange can be clearly heard, muffled through the door: "Sorry, yes, I work here. No, my apologies, but we're not open today. Tomorrow perhaps. Or the next day." 

And Crowley recognizes the voice just before Aziraphale lets himself into the shop, shutting the door quickly so as not to give whoever had inquired about the business hours the wrong idea.

Aziraphale stops, barely a foot over the entrance, and eyes his jacket, and all Crowley can see his furrowed brow. Crowley is about to complain that Aziraphale kept him waiting, not knowing if he was alive or dead, when he realizes that Aziraphale is—literally—_ slightly singed _around the edges. 

"I kept this pristine one hundred and eighty years and now look at the state of it."

He's not wrong; the jacket is a state. There is at least one large burn mark around the back that Crowley glimpsed and the bottom edges are completely tattered, burnt dark as charcoal. Aziraphale thumbs at one sooty, ruined end.

"One hundred and eighty years," he says again, lamenting.

"There was the paintball incident," Crowley points out, faintly. Relief rushes through him so strong he sinks a little with it, knees giving slightly. He adds, rather unnecessarily, "You're back."

Aziraphale glances up, surprised, and his smile starts from his eyes, as it always does, upon seeing Crowley. "You waited for me," he observes, as if Crowley could do anything else.

It must be a trick of the light, because Aziraphale's eyes aren't right. Crowley crosses the room in a few long strides, hands moving to bracket Aziraphale's face before angling him to see better. Some distant, small part of Crowley's brain notes he's touching Aziraphale more familiarly than he probably should. He tilts Aziraphale one way, then the other. Aziraphale allows it. This close, he can see it was not just the lighting. Aziraphale's eyes are now—impossibly—wrong.

"Your eyes," he starts, before stopping. He tries again, "Hold on. Your eyes are red. _ Why _ are your eyes red?"

Typically, Aziraphale's eyes are not at all ordinary. Human-ish. The exact color is hard to pin down, sometimes seeming more green or gray or blue. However, they never had so much as a hint of brown. Definitely not _red._ And red isn't quite the right description of them now. Even in the afternoon light, they seem to emit a glow. Eyes aren't meant to look like fire and yet, impossibly, Aziraphale's eyes are now exactly that. Not at all human. Or angelic.

"Crowley," Aziraphale begins, swaying slightly under his palms. He's still messing about with his jacket.

"Aziraphale," Crowley interrupts, wanting to shake him. "Stop prodding at your coat and _ tell me _ why your eyes are _ red. _"

"Ah," Aziraphale says, "Are they?"

Crowley feels he deserves some sort of commendation for patience, because he manages to quite calmly say, "Yes, yes, they are. Well, red-ish."

"I see," Aziraphale says. He sounds far too unperturbed when Crowley's heart feels as if it is trying to escape his chest. "I didn't actually notice. Hell is so very dirty, if there was a mirror I doubt I could have seen anything with it. Actually, I cleaned up a bit. It seemed to make sense since I crashed a little." He makes a gesture. "Took out a chunk of ceiling. There was definitely some structural damage. Perhaps I overdid the cleaning, but no one seemed to mind. The pipes were leaking all over the floor before that, someone mentioned—"

"The pipes were leaking. In Hell."

"Yes," Aziraphale nods. 

Crowley wants to scream his frustration. Aziraphale might sense this, because his face pinches up, like it does when he's concerned. He says, "I did go to Heaven first about the letter. They wanted me to stay."

"Stay. In Heaven," Crowley says, feeling like a parrot.

"Are you alright? You seem," he pauses, "off."

Crowley's fingers flex involuntarily from where they still sit on Aziraphale's face. He drops them to his sides. He tries again, "What happened? From the beginning."

"You know most of it: I went to Heaven this morning. Gabriel didn't even want to talk about the failed apocalypse. I think they're somewhat embarrassed about, well, everything. I got the impression they're trying to work out the theology of whether they're allowed to make a fuss or not. Anyway, he said I was welcome back into the fold, so to speak, provided I follow some stipulations." Aziraphale looks down, embarrassment creeping into his face, "Apparently, I am 'untrustworthy around demons,' so he gave me a choice: Stay in Heaven as an angel, or they'd cast me out."

"And yet you're here."

"It gave them a shock when I said 'no thank you' and resigned. They didn't expect that."

"_Why _ did you?"

"Their terms were unacceptable. They wanted to keep me locked up behind the pearly gates." Aziraphale pauses, offended. "Of course I said no. What else could I say? I wouldn't be able to see you any longer had I agreed."

Aziraphale's words crash through him, landing somewhere between his lungs and stomach, stealing every ounce of breath he had.

"They tossed you out."

"More to the point, I fell of my own accord." Aziraphale smiles at him, brittle as his voice, "But yes."

"You gave up Heaven."

"Yes. I said as much."

Crowley can't stop himself from finishing out this line of thought, even though he's sure it will make the both of them feel worse to say it aloud. He says, "So here you are: A newly minted demon. Hot off the press. A red-eyed devil."

"It seems so."

"You're an idiot, you know. No one says 'Oh and by the way, I've decided to quit eternal paradise.' It just isn't done."

_Take it back,_ Crowley thinks. It isn't fair that after averting the damn apocalypse, Aziraphale, of all beings, is the one to pay. He wants to say: _ It's a mistake. I'm not worth giving up _ everything. 

Aziraphale reaches out, takes one of Crowley's dangling hands in both of his own. He says, "It'll be alright." He tugs slowly at the captured hand, so slowly it's as if asking permission. Crowley lets himself be drawn in. Then, he finds himself being kissed, gently. It's simultaneously a surprise and not at all unexpected. Aziraphale holds his hand pressed between their bodies and kisses as if that is all he plans to do ever again. It is nothing more than a chaste press of lips against lips but still Crowley finds himself too decimated to move, nevermind reciprocating anything more than the barest pressure back. Crowley hopes, desperately, he isn't standing like an unresponsive tool. And yet he can't seem to pull himself together enough to harness even an ounce of what he is feeling into any form of response. He thinks he makes some sort of noise and hopes it is too quiet for Aziraphale to hear. 

When Aziraphale steps back, his voice is a bit more firm.

"I'm utterly exhausted. Take me home."

It isn't until they're in the Bentley that Crowley registers the wording and is, despite everything, delighted.

_ Home. _


End file.
